Nash (2 page)

crowd of three guys I recognized from chem crowded past me as they joined the mayhem taking place in

the living room. I couldn’t find a safe place to rest my eyes, everywhere people seemed to be doing

something that made me blush. I did my best to keep myself from gaping, but I felt the telltale heat creeping

up my neck as I pushed my way through the sea of bodies. It was disturbing and I was beginning to think a

new hairdo and some mascara would never be enough to make me fit in, in a place like this.

The kitchen looked a little less crowded, so I moved in that direction, keeping my eyes peeled for Nash.

I was certain that if I could find him, this night would turn around. My stomach fluttered again as I thought

about meeting those purple eyes across the room. I imagined them glinting and crinkling at the sides like

they did when he smiled, and I pictured myself suddenly at ease by his side as the rest of the chaos faded

away. He would make all the discomfort creeping under my skin disappear.

As I rounded a corner someone bumped into me, spilling sticky, red liquid all down the front of my

carefully selected shirt. I gasped in surprise and the jerk moved on without even apologizing. I was shaking

and officially freaking out on the inside. It was all too clear that I didn’t belong here, no matter how cute

Nash Donovan was. My hands started to shake and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep tears at

bay.

Turned out, the kitchen was just as bad as the front of the party. Worse really, because the booze was

apparently kept there and the crowd in that room seemed to be the drunkest of the drunk. It was like

walking across a minefield of ugly remarks and dirty looks to get to the sink to try and clean up. I heard a

few snickers, saw a few blurry looks cast my way, and it was enough. I planned to rinse off and go home.

This place and these people were not for me and I knew better.

“Who invited you?”

The question was slurred and followed with a heavy hand on my shoulder. The voice—and the hand—

belonged to none other than the birthday girl herself, and she was drunk. Really drunk and out for blood.

Ashley and I weren’t friends, but she had never said or done anything overtly nasty to me in all the years

we had gone to school together … I kind of felt like I was going to throw up.

“What?”

“Who invited you?” There was a sneer on her pretty lips, her big brown eyes glassy. “Why are
you

here?”

I wanted to say Nash had asked me to come, that he had told me we were going to hang out tonight, but

I couldn’t get the words out … because just then he showed up.

He entered the kitchen followed by the Archer twins and Jet Keller. There was no mistaking it: these

boys brought the party with them wherever they went. Nash had on his customarily sloppy look of torn

jeans, skate shoes, and a band T-shirt. He also had a baseball hat pulled low over his forehead that did

nothing to hide the high flush in his face or the unclear and foggy haze covering his eyes. It was obvious he

was already wasted or even high and I felt the first threads of disappointment start to tie up my cracking

heart. I saw his gaze skim over the kitchen, land on me, and keep moving. It made me suck in a painful

breath and I had to bite the inside of my cheek—hard—to keep from really crying.

It was like he didn’t even see me. He didn’t smile, didn’t wink, and didn’t so much as incline his head

in my direction. It was like I didn’t even exist. I went numb. I felt like my blood turned to ice and

everything in the center of my chest ceased to work. I curled my shaking hands into fists and tried to

frantically plan an escape route that would save me any further embarrassment or heartache.

Ashley apparently forgot all about my fatness and ugliness marring her party and bounded over to the

new additions. If my heart filled with awful feelings at his flagrant dismissal, then it practically burst open

when he scooped her up in his arms and let her inhale his face while he grabbed her ass. I wanted to choke

on my embarrassment as I scrambled backward out of the kitchen. There was no more thought put to self-

preservation, only to escape. I had a frantic, desperate need to put as much space between me and this party

—but more so between me and Nash—as possible.

Mercifully, the tears didn’t fall until I was safely at my car. In that moment, slumped in my driver’s seat

with black streaks on my fingers from the mascara I’d let Faith smear on, I knew the truth: the beautiful

people stuck together and it didn’t matter what was on the inside. Nash might be nice when it was just him

and I by our lockers, but put him in a room full of people, give him a skinny and pretty girl willing to put

out, and I was invisible. I’d been so stupid to think it was anything more.

So I did what was instinctive and resurrected the shield around my heart. From then on I ignored him

every time he tried to tell me hello. I looked away from him when he smiled at me. I avoided my locker as

much as I could when I knew he was going to be there and tried to focus on the fact that graduation was

right around the corner and I would be leaving this small mountain town and this clueless boy that had hurt

my feelings so deeply behind. I knew logically Nash didn’t know how I felt, had no clue that I had thought

he was different and special, but that didn’t make the burn of his ignorance or my embarrassment any less

hot.

In the warmth of early spring, with my college enrollment all lined up for fall and my insecurities

carefully compartmentalized—the sting of my failed crush finally beginning to heal—I stumbled upon Nash

and his friends outside smoking after school … My heart lurched, but none of them saw me and I scuttled

by, hoping to hurry to my car and planning on ignoring him like I had been doing since the party, when his

deep voice assaulted my ears.

“She’s a mess. If she ever wants to get laid, she needs to look in the mirror and maybe do some work.”

One of the other guys cackled at the nasty statement and I thought I was going to vaporize into a cloud

of horrified smoke. He had to be talking about me and I couldn’t move once I heard what he was saying.

I heard Nash snort as I tried to sneak by so they wouldn’t notice me or my tears. I had never cried so

much over any other person and it made me hate him a little—or a lot—as he kept talking.

“I mean I’m not picky, I would take her to bed. I just might need to put a bag over her head first or

something.”

That sent the rest of the guys rolling in laughter as the ground beneath me fell away and a sob caught in

my throat. How could I have been so incredibly wrong about someone? Any hope, any thought that he was

different—that any pretty boy could be different—was annihilated with those hateful, harsh words. Words

that forever changed the way I looked at the opposite sex.

Nash Donovan was a beautiful, wicked, and hot flame that burned me when I got too close. He was just

the first stop in a journey dotted by disappointment, but somewhere along the way I found my footing. My

purpose. I just didn’t know that as soon as I did, Nash would manage to turn my world upside down all

over again, and only a fool gets burned twice by the same fire.

CHAPTER 1

Nash

Thanksgiving … Eight years later

My fully restored Dodge Charger was eating up the highway as I raced through the cold Colorado night.

The massive engine was growling angrily in time with my thundering heart and light flurries of snow

dotting the windshield, so I could blame the rapid blinking of my eyes on trying to see through the nasty

road conditions and not the emotion threatening to overtake me. None of it registered, neither did the fact

that I had to be pushing 120 and that terrified holiday traffic was undoubtedly scrambling to get out of my

way. I was in such a fog, such a state of disbelief, that I felt numb and barely aware of what was going on

around me. I had just found my uncle Phil, the one and only parental figure I had in my life, unconscious

on the floor of his hunting cabin. He was cold and still. He looked like a skeleton, skin stretched over bones

that appeared far too fragile. I was racing the “Flight for Life” the park rangers had called in to airlift him to

the emergency room in Denver.

Just to add to the danger of the speeds I was traveling and the way my mind was on anything but the

road in front of me, I put in a panicked call to Cora Lewis, my coworker and close friend. She was all kinds

of take care of business and would rally the troops and get everyone else that mattered the information they

needed without me having to worry about it. She would help take care of me, she always did.

I made it to the hospital in record time and surged into the emergency room on a tidal wave of anxiety

and fear. I was more familiar with these institutional and sterile walls than I wanted to be—one of my

closest friends, my surrogate big brother Rome Archer, had tangled with a bunch of bikers and a bunch of

bullets not too long ago and I had spent hours upon hours nervously pacing these very halls waiting to see

if he was going to pull through. But right now this visit felt like it might define the rest of my life. The

security guard gave me a concerned look. I was used to it. When you had yellow, orange, and red fire

tattooed along each side of your scalp and had ink from your collar to your wrist on each arm, people

tended to think you weren’t really a very nice guy. Funny thing was that I was typically a lot nicer than most

of the guys I loved like brothers, but not right now, and if the nurse who sat behind the desk didn’t tell me

where my uncle was in the next second I was going to straight up lose my shit.

I was just about to breathe fire way hotter than the kind inked all over me when I saw her walking

toward me. She looked like an angel, even though her name was Saint. It fit her, Saint Ford, healer of the

sick and hater of anything and everything having to do with Nash Donovan. She was beautiful,

breathtaking, absolutely despised me, and made no secret about it. I had run into her more than once on my

unfortunately frequent trips to this ER, where she seemed to be a permanent fixture as one of the attending

nurses.

We had gone to high school together years ago, and while I was all for striking up a reunion of sorts,

she was having none of it. She made a big production of avoiding me, or giving me nervous, sideways

looks like she didn’t trust me or was forced to endure my company. Only right now, in this moment, she

was looking at me with equal parts compassion and seriousness in her soft, dove-gray eyes. It left no doubt

whatsoever that things with Phil were really, really bad.

She put a hand on my shoulder and I felt like I was going to shatter under the gentle touch.

“Nash …” Her voice was light and I could hear the bad news in it. “Come over here and talk to me for

just a minute.”

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hear whatever horrible words she was going to have to say to me, but

because she was so pretty, because she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen, I just numbly did what she

asked. There were worse people to take bad news from.

We took a few steps away from the nurses’ desk, and I gazed down at her with trepidation. She was

fairly tall for a girl, so we were eye to eye when she leveled it at me in a feather-soft voice speaking rock-

hard words.

“Did you know Phil was so sick?”

I felt like she was asking me as a friend, or someone who actually cared about what was happening, and

not as a medical professional. I knew logically she was just doing her job, but it made me feel better to

pretend otherwise.

I didn’t have any words that sounded or felt right to answer her, so I shook my head.

“I recognized the name on the intake paperwork and the two of you look an awful lot alike. I figured I

might find you out here.”

I gulped down my thundering heartbeat and nodded my head stiffly. “He’s my only family.” That wasn’t

entirely true, but he was the only family I had that really mattered to me.

She sighed and I tried not to flinch when she put a hand on my cheek. I knew she didn’t like me, and

for some reason that made the fact that she was being so considerate, so caring, hit home that whatever she

was getting ready to lay out for me was way worse than I had imagined.

“He has lung cancer … the doctors are thinking stage four. He has an extensive medical chart. He’s been

receiving treatment for a while. We got him settled, gave him fluids, he might have pneumonia, so that’s

why he’s struggling to breathe, and his oxygen levels are dangerously low. We aren’t a hundred percent sure

why he was unresponsive just yet, but we’re trying to get him awake. The attending doctor called the

oncologist that was listed in Phil’s chart. It’s a serious situation, Nash. I can’t believe he didn’t let you know